


Missing Data Can Ruin the Foundation of Your Analysis

by leyley09



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 05:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7087156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leyley09/pseuds/leyley09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicky learns something new about Alex, and then something new about himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing Data Can Ruin the Foundation of Your Analysis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChelseaIBelieve (MochaCappuccino)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ChelseaIBelieve+%28MochaCappuccino%29).



> If you didn't see the pictures of Ovi playing basketball this last week, go here (I'll wait): http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2016/06/01/alex-ovechkin-coached-by-mother-tatyana-ovechkina-in-charity-basketball-game/
> 
> I was going to treat "write fic about it obviously" as a joke, because I only have like a dozen other things pending right now so I definitely don't need one more. Then my brain said "but if you were going to, what would you do", and now there's two more Ovi/Backy fics in the world, and I can't be sorry about that. (See archiveofourown.org/works/7086721 for the other one - it's delightful, I promise)

Contrary to popular belief, Nicky does NOT spend all his free time with Alex Ovechkin (shut up, Greenie, he doesn’t). Yes, they’ve known each other for a relatively long time, and yes, they are friends, but no, he doesn’t know every last single thing about Alex. It’s perfectly reasonable that he’s so...so...surprised by this revelation.

 

Maybe we should back up, just a bit. Let’s do that.

 

Four months ago, the Caps PR office had approached the players about participating in a basketball game as a fundraiser for a local children’s charity. Alex was volunteering before the pitch was complete. Nicky likes children’s charities - those events can actually be fun - but this event was scheduled smack in the middle of one of the only “long” weekends in March. It was only November, but Nicky had already been looking forward to the extra sleep. In addition, basketball is not really his thing. But he dares anyone to look a pleading Alex Ovechkin in the face and tell him “no” when he’s practically bouncing up and down with excitement.

“You don’t need to be good, Nicky, you just show up. Better if you aren’t good, really. Crowd likes it when the celebrities are bad.”

So fine, sign him up for the basketball thing. He’ll go and embarrass himself terribly, it’ll all be Alex’s fault, but it won’t last more than a few hours. Some of the other guys had agreed as well, so it wasn’t like he’d be alone in his suffering. It’ll be fine. 

Fast forward to this morning, several days in advance of the charity game, as Nicky is woken by loud, obnoxious Russian dance music emanating from his phone.

“Dammit, Alex, stop changing my ringtone,” Nicky mumbles into the phone.

“How you know is me?” Alex demands.

“Because no one else would have picked this crap. Why are you calling me at--” Nicky pulls away from his phone to see what time it actually is “-- seven fucking thirty in the morning?”

“We’re having practice at nine, for basketball game.” There’s a dramatically long pause. “Did you FORGET?”

It’s hard to talk when your face is buried in your pillow, but Nicky’s going to try anyway. 

“I can’t forget things you don’t tell me, Alex. We’ve talked about this.”

“This is why I call. I’m almost there; get up, open the door.”

Nicky sits up abruptly. “You’re coming here?” 

“Yes, and bringing breakfast. Get up already.”

Only the promise of breakfast convinces Nicky to drag himself out of bed at this hour. He pulls on a sweater and a pair of socks - none of which matches the violently colored plaid of his pajamas, a Christmas gift from Alex - and heads to the kitchen to start the electric kettle for tea.

Alex pounds on the door a few moments later. He’s carrying a takeout bag from a diner between their houses, which means the food inside is slightly less likely to be completely opposite of Nicky’s nutrition plan. He’s also carrying a large to-go cup from Starbucks. There’s whipped cream leaking out from under the lid; it looks like a sugar crash waiting to happen.

“Nicky!” Alex shouts as soon as the door opens. “It’s a great day for basketball!”

“Ugh,” Nicky replies.

Alex trails him into the kitchen and unpacks the bag while Nicky fights with his tea infuser. By the time he get the tea into the infuser, the infuser into the hot water, and the extra tea leaves off of the counter, Alex has set places at the breakfast bar and dished up all the food. He’s got eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, and fruit salad for himself, and Nicky’s favorite Greek omelet is waiting on a plate.

Alex talks through all of breakfast - whether or not he’s currently chewing food at the same time. Fortunately, he very rarely requires a response. Nicky is slowly waking up through a combination of food and tea. By the time he’s cleared his plate, he feels much less likely to stab Alex with his fork. 

“C’mon, c’mon, get dressed so we can go already.” Alex nudges at Nicky until he’s moving towards his bedroom again. 

“Why are we carpooling?” Nicky yells back towards the kitchen.

“Because you would skip it if I didn’t come get you,” Alex replies from immediately behind him. 

“Jesus christ, Alex,” Nicky elbows him, “how do you move that quiet? You know, I don’t actually need you to help me get dressed.”

“Just making sure you don’t sneak out other door,” Alex says with an obnoxious grin. He leans against the wall outside the bedroom door. “I’ll wait here.”

Nicky doesn’t slam his bedroom door. He just shuts it extremely firmly. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

It’s impossible to have any kind of conversation in the car. Alex has his phone plugged into the stereo, and the playlist jumps from one song to another before anything finishes. On top of that, Alex chooses to sing along at random places. Loudly. Exuberantly. Ear-splitting and off-key. It’s eight o’clock in the morning; no one should have this much volume at this hour.

They pull up in front of a community athletic center. Further down the parking lot, Beags and Greenie are exiting their cars. There are a handful of other guys, some of whom Nicky vaguely recognizes, standing around the door. No one mentioned it in their first meeting, but apparently Alex is in charge. He’s shouting greetings and waving at people as he grabs his duffel from the back seat. Nicky moves a little more sedately to grab his bag and follow Alex towards the door. Greenie catches up to him just before the threshold. 

“You know, if we were carpooling, Beags and I wouldn’t have minded a ride.”

“We weren’t carpooling.” Nicky glares at his doubtful expression. “I didn’t even know we were doing this until an hour ago. I got dragged out of bed without warning, fed breakfast, and shoved into a car that sounds like a Russian disco.”

Greenie is snickering. “Ovi brought you breakfast?”

“I wouldn’t have let him in without it.”

“Oh, well, that must be the only reason he brought it.”

Nicky pushes him into a trash can.

 

Inside the actual gym, guys are in various stages of prep. The ones who are athletes or spend enough time doing something athletic are stretching or warming up; the ones who aren’t are mostly standing around with travel thermoses trying to wake up. Alex is nowhere to be seen. Nicky drops his bag alongside the court and follows Greenie out to stretch.

They’re nearly finished when Greenie glances up at a someone coming through the door and nearly chokes. Nicky looks back over his shoulder, expecting to see a somewhat familiar local celebrity who is massively under-prepared for this. Instead, he finds Alex in a legitimate basketball uniform. This isn’t an off the shelf jersey or the over-sized shorts that most hockey players seem to live in. This uniform is all sized appropriately for Alex and must have been chosen or tailored for him, since it sports his trademark number eight.

Nicky sees Alex is every possible state of dress over the course of a season. Five years now he’s been playing with Alex, and he’s never seen Alex in anything like this. That is, of course, the only reason why he’s staring. He’s doing just fine until Alex turns to talk to a guy just behind him. Instead of stopping, Alex continues to walk, backwards, into the middle of the court. Nicky loses his balance and nearly faceplants into the floor.

Practice does not improve from there. 

Skill levels vary. Nicky falls somewhere towards the middle, about as expected. Beags is okay; Greenie is better. But Alex… Alex is shockingly good, especially compared to the rest of them. Standing just off the court, Nicky takes a moment during his water break to reflect on why he’s so surprised. 

He shouldn’t be; he knows Alex’s mother played basketball for the Soviet Olympic team. Presumably she would passed on some of her expertise in much the same way Nicky’s parents did with their respective sports. Nicky also knows that Alex can occasionally be found on one of the practice courts at Verizon with some of the guys before games. These facts, however, have not come together in his brain. He’s just never thought about them at the same time. If he had, he might have expected that Alex would be above average at this as well; it’s just how Alex is. 

It’s just….Nicky isn’t used to not knowing things about Alex anymore. It’s weird. It’s plausible, and reasonable, and a lot of other nice, boring things, but it’s still weird.

It’s weird enough that he’s distracted for most of this unofficial practice. Distracted enough that Greenie actually asks if he’s okay. He then gives Nicky all kinds of shit about how weird it is that Nicky didn’t know this already, don’t you spend every waking hour together, how could you not know this? It stops being funny when Nicky tries to brain him with a basketball and Alex actually whistles at them (where the fuck did he even get a ref’s whistle?) and glares. 

The practice isn’t long, as they don’t actually need to have any coordinated skills; it doesn’t really matter who wins the game, after all. Apparently, Alex just wanted to see what he was working with. It’s far too soon that Nicky finds himself back in Alex’s car (thankfully with an Alex in normal, regular Alex clothes again); he’s still processing the weirdness of the morning.

Alex drops him at the curb. He probably explained why he wasn’t coming in, but Nicky wasn’t paying attention. It’s not until he’s closing the front door that he bothers to wonder why Alex would have needed a special reason to not come in. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Nicky does his laundry and thinks. He picks up the stuff that accumulates when he has a busy game schedule and thinks. He cleans his kitchen and thinks. He drives over to Kettler for a mid-afternoon workout - grateful that everyone else seems to have been and gone already - and thinks. By the time he falls into bed later, he feels like he’s done nothing but think about why this day has been so weird.

The weirdness lingers through the next several days, through practices and games and a three-day road trip. Four different guys quietly ask him if he and Ovi are fighting. They aren’t, but he doesn’t know if the guys believe him.

Turns out Alex doesn’t believe him. The day before the charity game, Nicky is woken by loud, obnoxious Russian dance music emanating from his phone.

“Dammit, Alex, stop fucking changing my ringtone,” Nicky mumbles into the phone.

“Open your door,” Alex snaps. The call ends.

Nicky has one sock mostly on and the other caught on one of his toes when the pounding begins on his front door. He snatches a sweatshirt from the pile on the floor and pulls it over his head as he stumbles down the hall.

“What is your problem?” he shouts as he yanks the door open. “It is six fucking o’clock in the damn morning. We have the day off. Why couldn’t this wait?”

“Because you don’t talk to me for whole week, I can’t wait more!” Alex shouts back. It’s really cute how his English starts to go when he’s upset. 

 

Wait, what.

 

Alex shoves past him into the house, throwing his jacket over a stool in the kitchen, snatching the kettle from the counter and heading for the sink.

“You start being weird at basketball thing, if you don’t want to do you should say, I don’t want make you do something if you not talk to me ever, Nicky. I don’t know what I do so I can’t fix, okay?” Alex sets the filled kettle back on the counter, plugging it in and flipping the switch. “I’ll fix it, whatever, just stop ignoring me.” He pulls Nicky’s favorite mug out of the cabinet, digs around for the nesting doll infuser he gave Nicky for New Year’s. 

Nicky’s not actually listening to the ranting at this point. He’s still stuck on “really cute” and even more distracted by Alex moving around the kitchen, making tea that only Nicky will drink, even while he’s yelling about Nicky ignoring him. He forces himself to tune back in.

“I don’t want you be mad at me, Nicky,” Alex says sadly. He pours the boiling water into the mug and sets the mug next to the honey and milk on the counter. Nicky hadn’t even noticed him opening the fridge.

“I’m not mad at you,” Nicky rasps. Everything he’s thinking and feeling is all mixed up and stuck in his throat.

Alex looks up, frowning. “Are you sick? Oh god, I wake you up when you’re sick, I’m terrible, Nicky, so sorry--”

“I’m not sick,” Nicky interjects, with an almost hysterical giggle. “I’m not sick, I’m not mad at you. I’m just stupid.”

“No, Nicky, not stupid,” Alex insists, with painfully sincere offense. “Never stupid.”

“Yes, Alex, stupid.” Nicky steps forward to fix his tea. He moves very carefully, dragging the process out. He’s been thinking about this for over a week, but apparently he was thinking all the wrong things. When he can’t drag it out any longer, he lays his spoon gently on the counter and looks Alex in the face.

“I didn’t know how good you are, at the basketball stuff. And it was weird that I didn’t know about that. I wasn’t  _ trying _ to ignore you, I was just trying to figure out why it bothered me so much.”

“Why did it bother you?”

Nicky smiles shyly down at his tea. “Why did you make this?” He gestures at the mug. “You were really angry with me, but the first thing you did was come in and make me tea.”

“You like tea.”

“Yes, I do, but I don’t think that answers my question.”

“Because you’re still asleep till you’ve had tea.” The lack of eye contact is suspicious. So is the death grip on the edge of the counter.

“Alex.”

“I don’t know what you want me say, Nicky, those are reasons.”

“So you came in here mad at me, and you made me tea because I like it and because I’m not really awake until I drink it.”

“Yes.”

“Instead of just yelling at me and then leaving.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Alex throws his hands up in the air, in a perfectly ‘frustrated Alex’ gesture -  “BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, OKAY?”

“Okay,” Nicky replies calmly and buries his smile in his tea.

Alex deflates almost immediately from frustrated-and-yelling to absolutely-stunned. “What?” 

“Hmm?” Nicky inquires - as if he doesn’t have any idea what Alex could possibly be talking about.

“What did you just say?”

“I said ‘okay’.”

“I said ‘I love you’, and you say ‘okay’?!” 

“No,” Nicky argues, “you said ‘because I love you, okay?’ like it was a question. And I answered the question.” He puts his mug on the counter and starts to reach for the honey again.

“You little shit,” Alex starts laughing. He stalks around the kitchen island, slowly backing Nicky into the door to the pantry. 

“Nicky,” he says, quiet but still amused, “why did the basketball bother you?”

Nicky bumps into the door. “Because I thought I knew everything about you, and I didn’t, and who knows what else I was missing.”

“Think you were missing at least one more thing.”

“Yeah; I didn’t know you knew how to make tea.” He can’t completely hold in his giggle.

Alex rolls his eyes and steps closer. “Nicky,” he scolds, “what else you were missing?”

“It wasn’t actually about you. It was about me.”

“And?”

“Apparently, I’m in love with you.”   


Alex looks painfully smug. “I know.”

“You know?!” Nicky shoves at him. It doesn’t have much effect; Alex outweighs him by about a two-year-old child.

“Please, Nicky, how you could not? I’m the greatest. Most handsome, best at hockey--”

“Shut up, asshole,” Nicky laughs.

Alex just grins and boxes him in. He leans in a little extra to murmur, “you know, there is one other thing you don’t know I’m best at…”

He’s right. Nicky did not know he was best at kissing, but he’s going to give Alex plenty of opportunities to prove it.


End file.
